Assignment

If you would rather deter plagiarism than spend time detecting it after it happens then I'd recommend the following advice from the Library and Learning Centre at the University of Bath

For academics: effective methods of deterring plagiarism

Detecting plagiarism is reactive, short term, time consuming and can have a negative effect on students. Deterring plagiarism is proactive, has lasting impact and should have a largely positive effect.

Deterring plagiarism:

• Encourage originality - self reflection and individualised responses
• Use unusual topics and formats e.g. website, brochure, project, poster
• Ask for applied knowledge, applying theory X to event Y e.g. 'To what extent has Tony Blair increased the powers of the Prime Minister?' rather than 'What are the powers of the Prime Minister?'
• Ensure students understand referencing and citation practices, especially for online resources
• Assess process as well as outcomes
• Discuss plagiarism with students
• Demonstrate the poor quality of many plagiarised texts
• Teach general study skills (include the Library staff)
• Change assessment/essay topics every year
• Insist on drafts of assignments in advance
• Ensure secure submission and return of assignments
• Reinforce with other assessment methods such as in-class essays, exams, discussions, vivas
• Clarify how much collaboration is allowed in group work, be clear how marks will be allocated (group mark or individual mark?)
• Set up regular plagiarism audits

Clearly services such as turnitin.com may have a role to play in that last bullet point, but generally I think they are a symptom of the plagiarism witch-hunt that is discussed in Beat the Witch-Hunt! Peter Levin's Guide to Avoiding and Rebutting Accusations of Plagiarism, for Conscientious Students available from Peter Levin's Study Skills website

The JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service website, which was set up at the same time as the access to turnitin.com was negotiated (for UK institutions), has some good info on alternate approaches as well. And at least one linked article welcomes the revolution that widespread plagiarism will bring if it eliminates assessment via "decontextualized, audienceless and purposeless writing exercises".

Hopefully Moodle can help people utilise these deterrance measures effectively as well as incorporate detection services.

Just a bump to ask if anyone has made any progress on this out of interest?

please forgive the cross posting

I am always getting a lot of plagiarism in my courses, especially those in which I require Asians to write in English. I think that, as Bakhtin pointed out, since we are always using the words of others, the students think it is okay to use the expressions of others. It would be if they cited.

Anyway, it is usually quite easy to check using google. I just put in a short 4 word or so phrase and and after a few tries I find out the source material. But it is a very dull and depressing task, the sort of task that I would like to leave up to a computer.

If I were a programmer I think that it would be fairly easy to write an application like Eve2 (which has issues, so I don't recommend it) in php to check some or even all 4 or 5 word phrases to see if they result in Google hits and then to store those hits (or at least one of them) and highlight those parts of the submitted text that can be found on the web and where.

I would be able to donate towards the creation of this sort of functionality (if it worked with moodle 1.6).

Tim